“The airplane performed well,” said Mo Yahyavi, 747 program vice president and general (image: courtesy Boeing) manager, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “Based on early indications, the airplane is ready to fly.”
This was the last functional test planned before first flight. First flight of the 747-8 Freighter is scheduled for Monday, Feb. 8. At 250 feet long, the plane is the largest Boeing has ever built and about 18 feet longer than the existing 747-400 jumbo jet. The company conducted taxi tests on the freighter Saturday at Paine Field in Everett, north of Seattle.
"Based on early indications, the airplane is ready to fly," said Mo Yahyavi, the 747 program's vice president and general manager.
Boeing also is developing a passenger version of the plane. It lists 76 orders for the freighter and 32 for the 747-8 passenger jet, with the vast majority from international customers.
The company says the jets will be much quieter, more fuel efficient and have lower emissions than current 747-400 models.
Boeing launched the freighter program on Nov. 14, 2005, with firm orders for 10 planes from Cargolux of Luxembourg and eight from Nippon Cargo Airlines of Japan. The jet has a list price of more than $301 million, though airlines commonly negotiate discounts.
After completing the test program, the first freighter will be refitted and delivered to Cargolux.
Boeing's European rival Airbus had planned a freighter version of the Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger jet.
However, that program was put on hold in 2005 after FedEx Corp. and UPS Inc. canceled their
orders, leaving Airbus with an empty order book for the cargo plane.
The freighter version is to enter service late this year. The first delivery was to have been in late 2009 and the first passenger version in late 2010, but Boeing pushed back the dates due to design changes, limited engineering resources and an eight-week strike that shut down factories. The 747-8 freighter and passenger jets are much smaller than their A380 counterparts, which Boeing has touted as an advantage. It says the planes will cost less to operate than A380s and will be able to serve more markets.
The 747-8 passenger version will carry up to 467 people in three classes, with a range of just under 7,000 miles. Boeing says assembly of that plane is to begin around mid-2010, with the first delivery in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Last Dec 4., Korean Air ordered for five 747-8 Intercontinental jetliners. Korean Air is the first Asian airline to order the passenger version of the new, fuel-efficient 747-8. The airplanes have a total average list price value of $1.5 billion. Korean Air already has arrangements to operate seven 747-8 Freighters.
The North Korean case is significantly different from the conventional examples in that the move was sprung on the populace without warning, and most critically, enormous limits were placed on the ability to convert cash holdings.
In effect this wiped out considerable household savings and the working capital of many private entrepreneurs.
Citizens were instructed that they had one week to convert a limited amount of their old currency to the new currency at a rate of 100:1 (that is, one new won would be worth 100 old won).
But the limit would not buy much more than a 50kg sack of rice at prevailing retail prices.
The announcement set off panic buying as people rushed to dump soon-to-be-worthless currency, buying foreign exchange or any physical good that could preserve value.
As the value of the North Korean won collapsed on the black market, the government issued further edicts banning the use of foreign currency, establishing official prices for goods, and limiting the hours of markets and products that could be legally traded.
Scapegoat
However as social opposition to these moves began to manifest itself, the government was forced to backtrack, offering compensatory wage increases, sometimes paying workers at the old wage rates in the new currency, amounting to a 100-fold increase in money income.
The result has been a literal disintegration of the market, as traders, intimidated by the changing rules of the game, withheld supply, reportedly forcing some citizens to resort to barter.
Reports - difficult, if not impossible, to confirm - have emerged of civil disobedience, protests, and even physical attacks on government officials trying to enforce the tightened restrictions.
In the latest twist, the government appears to be in retreat - easing restrictions on markets and, according to some reports, scapegoating Pak Nam-gi, the Korean Workers Party Director of Finance, for the failed policy.
The politics of the episode clearly leave many questions unanswered.
Despite the fact that the reform was the year's single biggest economic event, it went unmentioned in the traditional joint New Year's Day editorial of several official publications.
Some reports emerging from the diaspora network of North Korean refugees indicated that the policy was being undertaken in the name of Kim Jong-eun, the North Korean leader's third son and purported successor, and was meant to signal his emergence as a major political figure.
Now it is an open question whether the fiasco has damaged his succession prospects in what is beginning to look increasingly like a nuclear-capable failing state.
